It seems every­one has 7 secrets to suc­cess, and now some­one has hopped on the 7-secrets band­wagon with some­thing for PhD stu­dents. Thinkwell is an Aus­tralian com­pany offer­ing a sem­i­nar and asso­ci­ated work book on “The 7 secrets of highly suc­cess­ful PhD stu­dents”. I bought the book out of curios­ity, but “book” is a gross exag­ger­a­tion — only eleven pages of fairly sim­plis­tic advice. I hope the sem­i­nar has more sub­stance. For what it’s worth, here are the so-called seven secrets.

1. Care and main­te­nance of your supervisor.
2. Write and show as you go.
3. Be real­is­tic.
4. Say no to distractions.
5. It’s a job.
6. Get help.
7. You can do it.

If you can work out what is meant from those head­ings, you’re doing bet­ter than me. After read­ing the “book”, I think a bet­ter sum­mary would be as follows.

1. Meet reg­u­larly with your supervisor.
2. Write up your research ideas as you go.
3. Have real­is­tic research goals.
4. Beware of dis­trac­tions and other commitments.
5. Set reg­u­lar hours and take holidays.
6. Make full use of the avail­able help.
7. Per­se­vere.

Noth­ing too sur­pris­ing there. Per­haps it should have been called “Seven obvi­ous things PhD stu­dents should already know”.

If I haven’t put you all off, one of the authors is pre­sent­ing the sem­i­nar at Monash in a cou­ple of weeks. The details are as follows.

• Pre­sen­ter:  Maria Gar­diner — iThinkwell
• Date: Fri­day 16 Octo­ber, 2009
• Time: 9:30am — 12:30pm
• Venue: The­atre R2, Build­ing 8 (Rotunda), Clayton

Book­ings are essen­tial (Monash stu­dents only)

The same authors have writ­ten sev­eral other book­lets includ­ing “Time for research: time man­age­ment for PhD stu­dents”, “The PhD expe­ri­ence: what they didn’t tell you at induc­tion” and “Defeat­ing self-sabotage: get­ting your PhD fin­ished”. They are dread­fully over-priced and light-weight, but con­tain some snip­pets of use­ful advice. Stu­dents at Monash can bor­row the books from me.